Data from: Historical Indigenous Land-Use Explains Plant Functional Trait Diversity

Human land-use legacies have long-term effects on plant community composition and<br>ecosystem function. While ancient and historical land-use is known to affect biodiversity<br>patterns, it is unknown whether such legacies affect other plant community properties<br>such as the diversity of functional traits. Functional traits are a critical tool for<br>understanding ecological communities because they give insights into community<br>assembly processes as well as potential species interactions and other ecosystem<br>functions. Here, we present the first systematic study evaluating how plant functional trait<br>distributions and functional diversity are affected by ancient and historical Indigenous<br>forest management in the Pacific Northwest. We compare forest garden ecosystems —<br>managed perennial fruit and nut communities associated exclusively with archaeological<br>village sites — with surrounding periphery conifer forests. We find that forest gardens<br>have substantially greater plant and functional trait diversity than periphery forests even<br>more than 150 years after management ceased. Forests managed by Indigenous peoples<br>in the past now provide diverse resources and habitat for animals and pollinators and are<br>more productive than naturally forested ecosystems. Although ecological studies rarely<br>incorporate Indigenous land-use legacies, the positive effects of Indigenous land-use on<br>contemporary functional and taxonomic diversity that we observe provide some of the<br>strongest evidence yet that Indigenous management practices are tied to ecosystem health<br>and resilience.<br>